Silent Dust, Hathor & Dominic Ridgeway: Mirrored / Dont Think
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Silent Dust's Dan Blishen and Andy Hobbs have outdone themselves with this latest single, even if they can't take all the credit for it. To create the material, the two collaborated virtually with fellow producers, Dominic Ridgeway for “Dont Think” [sic] and Hathor for “Mirrored.” Truth be told, credits for these fabulous productions could be extended further, given that the latter features dialogue from Annihilation spoken by Natalie Portman (as Lena) and Benedict Wong (Lomax), while “Dont Think” includes statements made by Ray Bradbury during a 1974 interview.
“Mirrored” disturbs from the first moment when icy synth textures lay a foundation for cryptic exchanges between Lomax (“But it attacked you”) and Lena (“It mirrored me ... It wasn't destroying me; it was changing everything, it was making something new”). Musically, the cut's got as much prog, IDM, and dub in its DNA as drum'n'bass; however stylistically parsed, it's five of the most incredible minutes we've heard in quite a while, the sound design crafted by Silent Dust and Hathor a wonder to behold.
As strong, the Ridgeway collab incorporates Bradbury declaring the intellect a danger to creativity because, in his estimation, “you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth—who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I've had a sign over my typewriter for twenty-five years now, which reads ‘Don't think!'” Couple that provocative voiceover with a pulsating undercurrent of clicking beats, vinyl textures, and synth patterns and the result's a dynamic production that's maybe not as unsettling as “Mirrored” but powerful nonetheless. In fact, these collaborations are so great, one can't help but wonder how amazing a full album of such productions would be.February 2019